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12 Chemical Stocks Near 52-Week Lows

Trolling the bottom for upside potential.

If you're aiming to "buy low and sell high," then it makes infinite sense to start your search with bargain-priced stocks. Regularly reviewing a list of stocks trading near their 52-week lows can be a great first step.

In this series, I do the initial legwork for you. To prevent us from being inundated with scores of disparate companies, I conduct my search by industry. This allows us to make some initial comparisons among semi-related companies.

Today, let's look at the chemicals space. Below are the dozen stocks that are within 25% of their 52-week lows and have market caps above $200 million.

Company

Recent Price

52-Week Low

52-Week High

P/E Ratio (trailing)

Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical(NYSE: SHI)

$37.87

$32.24

$63.05

6.5

PolyOne(NYSE: POL)

$11.61

$9.80

$16.61

4.4

Praxair(NYSE: PX)

$105.27

$88.64

$111.74

23.4

Sigma-Aldrich(Nasdaq: SIAL)

$67.78

$56.18

$76.16

18.8

Zep

$16.13

$13.33

$20.95

20.7

Sherwin-Williams(NYSE: SHW)

$84.24

$69.47

$87.87

18.1

Olin(NYSE: OLN)

$19.60

$16.11

$27.16

7.0

Airgas

$71.43

$58.00

$72.39

23.1

Minerals Technologies

$56.99

$46.17

$70.68

16.4

Air Products & Chemicals

$89.41

$72.26

$98.01

16.0

Calgon Carbon

$16.46

$13.28

$18.20

22.2

Scotts Miracle-Gro(NYSE: SMG)

$49.96

$39.99

$60.62

19.5

Source: S&P Capital IQ and Yahoo! Finance.

Over just the past 10 days, Sinopec shares have gone as low as $33.18 and as high as $43.00. It announced earnings late last week that were roughly flat with the previous year's quarter. As management explained it:

The Group proceeded actively with various tasks, leading to increases in sales volumes and unit prices of products of the Company. As a result, operating income of the Company increased. However, international crude oil prices fluctuated at high levels, resulting in an increase in operating costs; the prices of domestic refined oil products were not adjusted adequately and timely enough; and the competition was further intensified for petrochemicals.

Looking through the list, two other names pop out: PolyOne and Olin, which have P/E ratios well under 10. Note that their forward P/E ratios are also under 10, PolyOne just barely. You can check out PolyOne's latest earnings news here. And I recently took a look at Olin's initial numbers here.

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